A Statement in the Ice
by meganphntmgrl
Summary: Suppose that Adrian Veidt didn't have a tentacled monster created to his specifications. Suppose he instead called upon the Great Old One Cthulhu to attack New York... H.P. Lovecraft pastiche, written for the Watchmen kinkmeme on LiveJournal.


Strange it seems to me that I should be writing these words at all. There is very little opportunity for these scrawled letters to reach any mortal eyes by any earthly conveyance- and I am also filled with doubt that my statement should provide any succor to you, its unhappy discoverer, if you have penetrated what must be my icy tomb in your time. You likely already have a dim awareness- ah, but I realize too late that that is all we can have!- of the great horrors that have penetrated the very sanity of our species and rendered humanity a mass of gibbering lunatics crusted with their own coagulated blood, but you, and only you, shall know what awakened them.

For you see, reader, it was I.

I, drunk upon the hubris of the ancients and motivated by the best of intentions, am the fool who awakened that which now drives humanity mad en masse and shall one day bring an end to all that is and shall be. As so many before me have, I believed I could control them, could limit their actions with my commands and desires. Retrospection now makes it plain that I was already mad to believe this, but the very worst insanity is that which makes a man believe that he, and only he, is a paragon of sanity in a world like Bedlam writ large. I was a different man then, strong and and well-shaped, with a good reputation among my fellow-men (if only I had known to call them my fellow-men at that time! if only I had not elevated myself above them!) and all the luxury and comfort one could ever want.

I was reputed to be the smartest man in the world, and I believed it. I saw that the leaders of the world were encroaching upon a great and devastating war, and I convinced myself that I had to be he who would prevent this. The options arrayed themselves before me, none satisfactory, until I recalled a volume I had acquired during the travels of my youth.

The Necronomicon of the mad Arab had languished in my library for decades, its pages of eldritch knowledge growing ever more brittle as the book stayed shelved amidst more prosaic and innocent tomes, but now I turned to it. I believed that my only course of action was to give humanity a greater horror than that which they had created themselves- an enemy to stand against together.

I secreted my madness away like a jewel, keeping it to myself. Others could see my preparations but could not guess what the ultimate outcome would be. I had my domicile constructed in the Antarctic wastes, to be relatively near sunken R'lyeh but to simultaneously ensure my own safety (or so I thought). I hired researchers whose educations had been steeped in arcane lore, and whose own family trees contained traces of unspeakable decadence and affiliation with things men were meant to neither know or understand. I poisoned those whose existence served as a tether for the being we once knew as Doctor Jonathan Osterman, but who has since become something perhaps not unlike the Great Old Ones himself. When my former associate Blake discovered what I was attempting, I was compelled to kill him. I look back and see the actions of a madman, but then it made such sense, such clear, sharp sense!

The last who might have stopped me arrived thirty-five minutes after the Great Old One Cthulhu had already descended upon New York City, killing all who saw him as he first rose from the blackly shining depths of the harbor and sending a beacon to shake the foundations of the sanity of unfortunates worldwide.  
I had believed- truly, desperately believed- that this singular catastrophe might be the end of all that is painful and dark in our existence. I relied upon my intellect to guide me, and never stopped to reconcile myself with the truth- that I am, as we all are, nothing to the Great Old Ones. We are as unconsidered as bacteria, mere specks in Their eyes, and They will think nothing of destroying us.

I can hear a screeching amidst the wind that beats against this ruin that was once my palace. Perhaps His emissaries have at last come for me. I await their arrival with open arms and beseeching eyes. Death has been creeping upon me from the shadows for nearly a month now, or perhaps two. Or maybe a year? I can no longer tell. I have exhausted my food supply, even resorted to butchering and devouring the decaying flesh of the assistants I murdered in the final hour before I condemned our planet to a horror far, far greater than that which I saved it from.

Yes, something is approaching. My time will end very soon, I know.

To you, reader- if you have found this, rejoice, for perhaps the Old Ones have abandoned their attack and left the world alive another day. They cannot be defeated, but if they grow bored, perhaps one day the utopia I wished to create can flourish at last. I only ask that you know, and understand, that I was a fool, a fool who thought he could sa


End file.
